10

I’m Still Here
Color #10
Lady Yate-xel

“It’s quiet here without her.”

“I know,” Edgar replied, shivering. “It’s kind of unsettling.”

“You used to live here alone.”

“Yeah, but…”  Edgar looked around the living room and Johnny watched his gaze fall on the many scars the room had gathered while housing people more destructive than Edgar.  “When you came here, it felt like you were something that filled it up a little better. We had to force Banshee to fit in here, but now that she’s not here, it feels a little emptier than I thought it would.”

Was he talking about a person or a body piercing? “Going to crawl back over there and get her?”

“Nny, she broke your fucking arm.”

“Yeah, I was there for that, remember?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do that,” Johnny echoed mockingly. “I’ll make fun of my own arm breaking if I want to.”

“It’s serious. Something’s really wrong with her.”

Will you just pick someone to be concerned about? It’s like a fucking sliding scale. “Yeah, apparently.”

“I couldn’t have her here when she was able to do that. She used to love you and now she’s throwing you down staircases? I thought maybe she’d start coming after me too, and then… I don’t know.”

“So you kicked her out because you thought she’d hurt you soon? Thanks, Edgar.”

“That’s not it! Seriously, stop twisting this all around!”

Edgar looked so strange when he was angry, and even stranger when he was angry at Johnny.  Edgar grabbed Johnny’s shoulders and there was a snap behind Johnny’s eyes that itched, burned and screamed to lash out.

“Listen to me!” Edgar pleaded. “I took her to Pepito to protect everyone involved, okay? Not just me, not just you, not just Jimmy and Devi and Tenna. Of course I worry about you – you’ve got all this crap in your head and in the closet and you’re a little easier to break than I am – but I’m allowed to have a sense of self-preservation, too.”

“That isn’t what I said.” That isn’t what you said.

“You’re accusing me of protecting myself instead of you. And I’m telling you I would have gotten rid of her for only endangering you just as quickly as I would have if she was trying to break everyone.”

“Okay.” That might be all right.

“You and Banshee spent so much time worrying about who I gave more of a shit about.” Edgar released Johnny's shoulders and sighed as he ran his hand though his hair. “And Tess thinks it was horrible that you two care at all… I don’t know what sort of reaction everyone is expecting me to have, but whichever one I choose is always the wrong one.”

Edgar had to be from another world. He was from some universe where people were very polite and never did anything selfish and no one heard music in their heads.  Edgar was from an old black and white rerun with painted picket fences, milk men and dog catchers. It was charming in a sad and pathetic way, and it made the twinges and pricks in Johnny’s head grow beyond tiny annoyances. He resented that Edgar apparently lived in a world with decent people. People who didn’t explode or carry monsters inside themselves.

“Whatever,” Edgar said, perhaps answering himself. “Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“You picked me.”

Edgar shrugged. “Apparently.”

“She broke my arm because she blames me for her whole skeleton, and you side with me.”

“It’s not like she doesn’t know that arms can break. How the hell were you supposed to know your brain would make her bones explode?”

“And you’re making excuses for me.”  Kind of cute, in a sick way. “What does Tess have to say about that?”

Edgar was quiet while Johnny watched him, waiting. Edgar’s hands flexed a few times. Johnny had to remind himself that Edgar probably willed that to happen. Edgar let out a long breath, turned and focused his eyes uncomfortably on Johnny’s.

“I don’t care,” Edgar said with equal parts determination and realization. “I absolutely do not care what Tess thinks. I made a choice.”

“Did you?” Johnny titled his head and very consciously blinked.

“Shut up. Why do you even do this?”

“Do you really believe that you made a choice?”

“Yes, shut up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Okay.”

“What?" Edgar snapped. "What is this about?”

“One of us needs to know what he actually believes when my head implodes.”

“It won’t.”

“Are-”

Edgar held up his hands like he might grab Johnny's head, but just shushed him instead. “Don’t. Don’t contradict me, don’t question me, don’t fuck with me. It just won’t. That’s it.”

Johnny smiled and settled effortlessly into a spot against Edgar’s chest. “Okay. I trust you.” 

Maybe he didn’t, maybe he did, but Edgar didn’t know the difference, and given his reaction, Edgar had never heard words he liked so much.

****

The door was harder to resist than usual. Johnny couldn’t think of anything that had changed to make that happen but that Banshee was missing from the house. Or that his brains were weakening and Tess was eating them in a coffee shop somewhere. He felt more inclined to blame Banshee, however, since Tess had never mentioned an evil secret room, and Banshee had discovered one.

When he neared the door now, whatever was in it sang the same song it had howled to him the first few times he'd opened the closet. He knew logically that the lyrics and melody were just as unclear now as they'd been the first time, but words slipped out of the voice in the song so much easier now.

“Out of the sphere
Into the box
Tuning into
Wireless waves

Like most of what Tess had hit him with, Johnny could not hear words here without considering that they were to be relevant to him.

“Watching blue
Take the veil
Turn the channel

Flashback of reality
Hooked to fantasy”

It was the same white noise that had been there before, but now it was trying to mean something. Over the noise and the voice was a single repeating tone.  It echoed as though it was being slowly dripped into a bucket, and Johnny felt it on the verge of speaking.  Another song, another voice, ready to slip in and add to what was already buzzing in his head. 

Johnny jerked away from the door before the second voice got a chance to infect him.  Downstairs, Edgar and the television would be suitable distractions from the damn closet, Banshee’s fault or not.

****

 “No, I want to.”

“Johnny, you’ve got a broken arm. You think it’ll be easier to avoid being licked when you’ve got all this plaster all over you?”

The licking in question was a stunt pulled several shows ago, before Johnny had collapsed, and just after he’d died. Several girls in the audience begged Jimmy between songs for a chance to lick his guitar, apparently while Johnny was narrating some story or another. Jimmy, all too happy to oblige, played with them for a few minutes, while Johnny gave a dry play-by-play of their interaction. He made sure to cite ‘the obvious pelvic thrust that he thinks is very subtle’ and ‘the licking of the teeth – sure to reel them in with that glimmering off-yellow’.  Jimmy happily ignored Johnny’s narration, and at some points did things just to make Johnny say them. The audience members got their taste of Jimmy’s guitar and for the rest of the night, there was little incident. 

Several shows later, more girls, though possibly the same group, asked Jimmy if they could lick his guitar while Johnny was passing the microphone to Devi. Devi was intended to lay the smack down on someone who had been an asshole on their way in, but she was cut short by Jimmy indulging people yet again to lick his instrument. While Devi attempted to talk over Jimmy pretended the girls were licking something much more a part of his body, someone in the audience shrieked that they had interest in licking the guitar too. Jimmy waved them on up, and the show was delayed for several minutes as audience members clambered onto stage for a lick of Jimmy’s guitar.

Licking quickly moved from being a thing that a few cultish girls did to being a badge of honor and an activity that somehow spread over everywhere they traveled. Jimmy suggested, one fateful day, that someone lick Edgar’s keyboard, and one person in the small herd that rushed him managed to slobber over a good portion of the buttons along the top before a horrified Edgar could swat them away. This sparked not only the beginning of Edgar’s obsession with hand sanitizer, but the ‘Lick the Homicides’ game.

It was not an easy game since the band beyond Jimmy (and Tenna, who didn’t count), were entirely against it. People wanted to lick Devi’s drums, Edgar’s keys, Jimmy’s guitar and Johnny in general. No one licked Devi’s things without also being brutally assaulted with a drum stick or a cymbal, and yet she remained a popular target.  Pictures of the bruises Devi had inflicted became something like merit badges in fan circles and the race to see who could get Devi to hit them in the most places often resulted in car loads of mangled fans following the group for miles on end to get to the next performance.

Jimmy of course relished it, and began playing more games with the lickers. He offered free licks in exchange for sporks and kept a tally of how many people had licked him, the guitar or both. More than once, fans were found hiding under the van in an attempt to get Jimmy’s ankles and rather than be horrified like Devi, Jimmy rewarded the ankle lickers with autographed foreheads and posing for photos taken on their phones. The other Homicides were often seen in the backgrounds of these pictures looking ill or purposely miming that they were about to vomit. One that became a quick favorite was taken by a fan of Jimmy’s who was particularly gay for him and showed no shame in being flamboyant about it.  When the picture was sent to Jimmy’s mysteriously acquired phone, the background featured Devi shining a bright flashlight on Tenna’s naked chest, effectively ruining the image for Mr. Flamboyant Jimmy-Fancier.

Edgar found the entire licking thing disgusting, especially after finding a strange pair of teenagers taking pictures in the parking lot while they took turns licking messages into the dirt on the van. They’d scurried away from the scene like cockroaches when they heard Edgar coming, and, as far as Edgar was concerned, were just as disgusting. Though it was unlikely they had been anywhere near his keyboard, Tenna had to find Edgar some gloves that matched the majority of his costumes before he would agree to play again after the incident. He was eased out of the gloves after a few shows, but his disinfectant collection became a thing of wonder the day he stopped wearing them.

In Johnny’s mind, judging by his reactions, the game was more like rape than an annoyance. His responses to people attempting to lick him were loud, quick and often violent. People who attempted to catch Johnny unawares by looking casually disinterested were tripped, scratched, kicked or shoved off the stage to crash into other audience members. Fans getting close to him even without the intent to lick were attacked with absolutely zero provocation. He attempted to deafen one by screaming in a manner not unlike Banshee when the hapless bastard stepped in front of a speaker. Rocks from parking lots began to appear in his pockets and he once kept everyone but the Homicides themselves off the stage by performing with one of Jimmy’s broken beer bottles in his free hand. To date, no one had succeeded in licking any part of Johnny, or anything he owned. Those who came close often left bloody and never attempted it again.

It was because of Johnny’s reactions that his friends were attempting with everything they had to talk him out of accepting an invite to play somewhere significantly larger than the high school parking lots they’d been traipsing through since Banshee went to live with Pepito. Not only could the invite be some kind of Tess trap, they warned, but a cast was going to be nearly impossible to resist to the fans that only had the Johnny square left in Homicides Licking Bingo.

“I’d like to see them try anything,” Johnny said. He was unwaveringly confident.

The place they were invited to was dark, and a little dingy. It smelled partly of mildew and partly of ancient sweat.  The audience included some veteran lickers; some that were even skilled enough to have escaped only slightly wounded from Devi, and several people wearing T-shirts declaring their intent to get Johnny.  Edgar spent the time he was supposed to be helping Jimmy set up devising ways that they could avoid a much larger crowd, but was unsuccessful not due to a lack of great ideas, but from Johnny’s unwillingness to listen to any of them. Johnny only told Edgar, “It’s okay,” in response and ignored even the suggestion that he wear all black and be suspended from the ceiling.

The stage was set up and ready to go when Jimmy re-appeared from a long prance in front of the audience. The others lounged in a side hallway, half-debating whether or not to even go on.

“Guys, you’ll never guess who’s out there,” Jimmy said.

“Wait, I know this one,” Devi answered, holding up her hand and scrunching up her face. “It’s Psychic Doom Woman, right? I’ll start packing our shit.”

“No, no. It’s Dib!”

“What, seriously?” Edgar asked. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“Takin’ a break from stalkin’ the Anti-Christ?” Tenna suggested. “Gotta be a rough job, you know, with all that cookie making and video game playing he does.”

“I’m just sayin’,” Jimmy muttered. “When was the last time we talked to him?”

“I vaguely recall deciding not to send him into a bottomless pit once,” Edgar said.

Tenna gave him a muffled applause.

Jimmy apparently found more significance in Dib’s presence than any of the others and dramatically pouted until the rest of the group arbitrarily decided it was time to get up and string some songs through people. Johnny, who had been curled up and borderline comatose until the others moved, suddenly jerked into a state of awareness that startled everyone.

“Whoa, you gonna hurl?” Tenna asked, her hand hovering over his shoulder.

“She’s here.”

“Nny, no,” Jimmy said. “I checked. I didn’t see Tess anywhere.”

“I don’t mean her.”

“What?”

“Just go,” Johnny breathed. “I’m coming.”

“I should fucking hope so,” Devi muttered as she went to take her place behind her drums. “You were the one who wanted to do this.”

Johnny did not have the energy to give her any of his customary insults, but his eyes were remarkably effective at conveying them.

When he stood in front of a mass of people with a deep interest in licking him, he came to life.

“Hey, you miserable fuckers!” he shouted. Edgar flinched at the sound of it, wondering how much it took out of Johnny to yell like that.

“So I hear some of you pathetic losers have a sick and twisted interest in my arm here,” Johnny continued, motioning to his cast. He hadn’t chatted with the audience for a long time, and the others were unsure of whether to express concern or hope. “I can tell what you’re all thinking,” Johnny half-lied, “and I can also tell you you’re not getting it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Edgar thought he caught sight of Dib’s hair bobbing over the other ridiculous spikes of hair in the room. At first, it was nothing to be excited about, just a confirmed Dib sighting, but suddenly, Dib started attempting communication, and for some reason, Edgar was compelled to try to understand. He noticed that Devi was also interested in Dib, while Jimmy was keeping an eye on Johnny. Dib made several ‘don’t look now, but…’ faces that would have worked and been subtle in close-contact, but were ineffective across a crowded room. Edgar attempted to communicate back without drawing attention. Johnny, meanwhile, continued to promise that no one would be able to touch him, even though the cast had slowed him down.  Finally, Dib picked up binoculars and gestured toward them dramatically. Edgar looked at Devi, who shrugged. They both tilted their heads at Dib, who looked through the binoculars and across the room, freezing deliberately at a certain point and nodding his head. When he followed the path of Dib’s vision, Edgar caught sight of Pepito.

“Oh, shit,” Devi whispered. Edgar held up a hand to signal her to keep her quiet.

Johnny finished his talk and stood there, looking at the mass of people before him. He turned to look behind him and was greeted by Devi and Edgar making pained expressions similar to Dib’s. Johnny either understood them completely or was delirious with power, because he only smirked before turning back around to dare his audience to come get him.

There was a shift forward in the crowd and Johnny shrank back only slightly before a single piercing scream erupted from somewhere near one of the side exits. General unrest surged through the crowd as people shuffled away from Pepito, who cleared space in front of him for the source of the noise. He’d done some work on her, but standing with him, dressed identically to Johnny, was Banshee.

Jimmy was visibly conflicted at the sight of her, and Edgar felt a little sick. Her hair was dark, and most definitely not green anymore. The way she stood, the way she glared, and the way she slipped around everyone in the audience to make her way to the stage mimed Johnny perfectly. Even her chest was totally hidden and flattened underneath her shirt. Seeing her next to Johnny was eerie and incredibly uncomfortable. She said nothing to Johnny, though they seemed to exchange an incredible amount of conversation through their eyes.

And then she screamed again.  Her voice made a deafening squeal in the speakers, though she appeared to have no microphone. When the awful sound faded, Banshee bowed and mimed Johnny’s stage theatrics down to calling the audience a ‘bunch of miserable fuckers.’ The voice was clearly Banshee’s (even though she was scaling it to sound a little less teenage girl), but it was coming from what frighteningly resembled Johnny’s body.  Conceivably more frightening was that Johnny was not crucifying Banshee for this, but stepping slowly away, expression unreadable, while Banshee simultaneously saved him from the masses and expertly mocked him.

Banshee started to sing a song they hadn’t planned to play - a song they hadn’t written and that Tess had borrowed and haunted them with once - but both Johnny and the audience encouraged the rest of the band to back her up. She obviously wasn’t used to singing in front of a ton of people, but she was used to being in front of them, and her mimicry of Johnny seemed to give her the ability to pretend she wasn’t new to this at all.

“Destroy everything you touch
Today
Please destroy me
This way”

In a few instances, Banshee apparently felt that instruments were not enough and a trace of another song escaped her to blend with the one being played.

“it’s my red star”

Edgar expected things to explode with each and every note, but no one died, or even screamed where it was not lyrically appropriate. Johnny even sang with Banshee on her last chorus.

“Everything you touch you don’t feel
Do not know what you steal
Shakes your hand
Takes your gun
Walks you out of the sun

What you touch you don’t feel
Do not know what you steal
Destroy everything you touch today
Please destroy me this way”

When the last notes of music faded, the audience leapt at the stage with a frightening enthusiasm. Edgar noticed Pepito and Dib as the only stationary bodies in the bunch, though Pepito did make a smug acknowledging nod at Dib while Banshee mimed Johnny’s ‘receiving praise’ mode. With the perfect tone, the exact smirk and just the right level of theatrics, Banshee bowed dramatically to Johnny, extending her arm to him.

“And a-fuck you,” she said sweetly.

“Fuck you, too, Banshee,” Johnny replied, imitating his own copy with a wave of his arm to the audience, “from all of us.” 

He’d meant himself and the others on stage, but the audience took it to mean themselves, applauding and cheering wildly.

Johnny and Banshee laughed. Edgar felt mostly like throwing up on the keys.

****

Banshee returned home to mixed reactions. Edgar still felt that he couldn’t trust her and was wary that more limbs were on their way to being snapped. Johnny behaved as though he had completely forgotten who had broken his arm and enjoyed Banshee’s company immensely. Edgar often caught them both attached to a single CD player each wearing half a pair of ear buds, staring into space or humming along to songs he couldn’t hear. Johnny was friendlier to Banshee while his arm was broken than he had been when she first appeared.  They insulted each other daily, and were often screaming at each other at night while they were both supposed to be sleeping.  Edgar spent a few nights buried under several pillows and curled into a fetal position while Johnny yelled obscenities into the hallway and eagerly awaited them to be returned like some vulgar version of “Marco Polo.”

Tess, Edgar imagined, would have seen Johnny and Banshee’s disregard for his sleep schedule as proof of everything she had been saying all along, but Edgar found that he sort of enjoyed it. He  felt wary of Banshee and still wondered when she had become so violent, but was happy to see Johnny with enough energy to fight with her. He was even happy to see them agreeing and enjoying each other even in a violent fashion. Unfortunately, more than once, flood gates opened, and they stopped having innocent but violent fun and had just violence.

The situation grew to its worst when Johnny made a joke about Banshee’s breasts and how she was likely to attract a lot of lesbians. Banshee dared him to repeat it and, unthinking, since he was watching television, Johnny did. Banshee leapt on him like an animal and began tearing at him. She pulled at his hair, swearing loudly, and vowing to kill him. Johnny scratched her, and tried to pull an earring out of her ear.  Banshee’s ear began to bleed, Johnny screamed about getting blood on him, and Banshee scratched a chunk out of his jaw in response. When Edgar tried to break in, Banshee snarled at him and Johnny didn’t seem to notice he was there.

Johnny screamed that Banshee was useless, and she yelled that he was dependant and crazy. Banshee would never be anything near as good as Johnny at anything, and Johnny was going to die alone or with whatever shell of a person he could convince to waste their life with him.

“You’ll never have parents and no one loves you!”

“People only like you because you scare them!”

“You’re an ugly girl!”

“Only because you’re such an ugly man!”

“No one wants you!”

“You’re abusing the only person who wants you!”

And on and on.

The fights were long, and they were violent, and Edgar had little effect on their outcome. Banshee twisted an ankle once and had to attempt to wrap it while avoiding Johnny’s cruel jabs at her. She worked hard after that to exhaust Johnny to the point that he could no longer fake being alert. When Johnny began to falter and had difficulty standing, Edgar tried to step in and stop it again, but Johnny pushed him away. When the fight stopped long enough for both Banshee and Johnny to tell Edgar to fuck off, Edgar left. He hoped that whatever they were doing would be resolved overnight if he was not there. It had been that way with all their other fights, and he had no plan for what would happen if it wasn’t, but he had hope at the very least.

He walked for a few blocks, intending to stay with Devi and Tenna for a few hours while Johnny and Banshee exploded, but saw Jimmy’s trailer on his way.  What compelled him to knock, he didn’t know, but in a few moments, he found himself looking at a very perplexed Jimmy.

“Uh, hi,” Jimmy said, looking Edgar up and down.

“Hey. Could I… stay here for a little while?”

Jimmy raised a suspicious eyebrow, but waved Edgar inside. The apartment was cluttered, badly lit, and decorated with images of the Homicides and generic guitar posters. There was a smell, but Edgar couldn’t tell if it was a bad smell, or just a different one.

“What’s going on?” Jimmy asked. “Nny and Kleine hate each other again?”

“I don’t think so, actually,” Edgar laughed. “I think only best friends can fight like that. I was just getting in the way of their freakish bonding, so I thought I’d just disappear for a while. I still have trouble not seeing it coming to irreversible violence when they do this.”

Jimmy laughed and cleared some miscellaneous things off of a beanbag on the floor. He offered the spot to Edgar, and then sat himself on the coffee table. He took a drink from the can his hand and looked satisfied with himself.

“Sounds like some intense bonding.”

“Yeah. They’ll mellow out eventually, I guess. I’m just here to keep more limbs from breaking.”

“What, you’re gonna break some arms now, too?”

Edgar laughed and brushed some hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, if I was the one who was prone to breaking arms, I wouldn’t be hiding here with you.”

“Way to man up, there.”

“Do you want to go over there? I’m sure Nny would be thrilled to see you.”

Jimmy gave a nervous laugh.

“Do they always do this?”

“I think this one is sort of a different flavor than before. Less arm breaking and more ‘my brain slash boobs are on fire’. You know, depending on who’s screaming.”

“I still just - She can’t be that old…” Jimmy held the sense of wonder in his voice that was more appropriate to a child he hadn’t seen in years.

“She isn’t that old.”

Jimmy sighed and slid off the coffee table. He disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and Edgar heard the refrigerator open. When Jimmy reemerged he held a glass bottle in front of Edgar’s face. 

“Here,” he said, “sounds like you could use some of this too.”

Edgar examined the bottle in his hand for a few moments. Jimmy was already well invested in the contents of his own before he noticed Edgar’s hesitation.

“It’s not poison,” Jimmy said. “I just opened it.”

“Hey, you never know.”

“What, you think I’m gonna date rape you or something?”

“It seems I can’t be too careful,” Edgar replied, taking a swig.

****

And now there was so little she could do.  Lost time, fleeting images of talking to Edgar, of Edgar being angry with her, of Johnny’s eyes in the background.  The world in her head no longer matched the world she lived in and had instead begun to resemble something small, dark, close and rotting all around her.  There were bright patches leaking through the cracks, but somehow she was too large to reach them.

Tess was scared of what lived in her head, and in that single piece of overlapping experience she found her only shred of sympathy for Johnny.

****

Jimmy often felt conflicted when he had a good time with Edgar.  When Edgar came to stay in his house and find a bit of shelter from the madness in his own, Jimmy wondered why he allowed it.  His old feelings for Johnny hadn’t died, and offering support, maybe even comfort, to the man who had Johnny all to himself did not make too much sense at all. He liked Edgar when he pushed Edgar’s relationship with Johnny to the back of his mind (or out of it, if possible) and they were friends in a way that he’d never been with Devi.

Watching Edgar and thinking, “This is the person Johnny wanted. This is the one he chose,” forced a kind of twitch to develop in Jimmy’s lips. Edgar, meanwhile, seemed blissfully unaware.

“Why did you come here?” Jimmy asked. He took a long drink and pretended the question had no weight or importance to him at all. Edgar either fell for the act, or Jimmy was far more transparent than Johnny would ever be and Edgar, with his keenly developed Johnny-fu, was humoring him.

“I didn’t want to see Devi,” Edgar said.

“Fuck you.”

“It’s true!” Edgar protested. “What, are we not actually friends? I can’t just visit? You actually poison this stuff?” He shook the bottle at Jimmy, the remaining drink clinking softly in the glass.

“Johnny doesn’t mind?”

“That you poison me?”

“And again, fuck you.”

Edgar laughed and set his bottle down next to his foot. “The odds are pretty good he doesn’t notice I’m gone right now and he and Banshee are blowing up the house carefree. And really, it’s not like it’s me you wan-” He flinched, seemed to try to come up with something eloquent, and finished with, “Sorry.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I’m just gonna keep repeating myself if I keep talking to you.”

“It would be a warranted “fuck you”, if that helps any.”

“What? ‘Fuck you, you reasonably considerate person who doesn’t insult my intelligence and or preferences every time we share breathing space’? ‘Fuck you, guy who apologizes to me’? ‘Fuck you for not letting me hate the guy that stole my crush in high school’?” Jimmy rolled his eyes and desperately wished for more alcohol. “Yeah, Edgar. Fuck you.”

“Do excuse me. I’ll make sure to be a dick more often.”

“I hate that I don’t hate you.”

It wasn’t entirely true, but it was the closest Jimmy could manage.

“I don’t know what makes you think you wouldn’t have the most abusive relationship ever with him,” Edgar said. “Johnny is totally willing to treat people like shit if that’s all he thinks of them.”

“He doesn’t think I’m complete shit,” Jimmy countered.

“I didn’t say that. Just that he would be just as terrible to you if he lived here as he was living in the school.”

Jimmy realized then that Edgar had no idea how bad Johnny had truly been.

“You want to know what happened to me?” Jimmy asked, rising from the table. “You want to hear what he did?”

“This isn’t the baseball bat thing, is it?”

“No. No it fucking isn’t. He was here once, with me. With just me.” Jimmy’s blood rushed faster and hotter just with the memory. Remembered how hot it had been that day, that the pavement had been steaming, and that Devi had drenched Jimmy with a hose from some old woman’s garden, and then turned it suddenly on Johnny.

“He was right there,” Jimmy said, pointing to the spot near the door. Even now, years later, he could still see Johnny sitting there if he was drunk or tired enough. “He sat there, because I asked him to come in, because I wanted a chance and fuck if I wasn’t going to take an opportunity like ‘my underwear’s soaked.’”

Edgar looked uncomfortable but nodded, and some of his song swirled into the background of Jimmy’s.  It wasn’t a perfect match, but they did something together Jimmy hadn’t expected.

“Never been –happy- enough”

“And he said yes, okay? He sat right there and told me, wet and half naked, that I could have him.” Jimmy pointed to the spot aggressively, mentally blaming it for the anguish he suffered at the hands of someone who once occupied it. “And you know what?”

Jimmy turned to Edgar, who was still listening, rather than taking the pause in Jimmy’s speech as a chance to halt something potentially unpleasant.

“For a few minutes, I did have him. Really had him. Did anything I thought he’d like. Anything I knew I would like.  Anything he’d let me. And he sat there, right fuckin’ there, right next to the dry clothes I brought out for him and let me do it.”

Jimmy remembered Johnny’s skin and how unlike skin it felt when it was wet.  Skin that he never saw when Johnny was clothed. He remembered Johnny’s scars, his uneven lines of tan or sunburn or dirt and his hair, dark, uneven, jagged, wet, and slick against his scalp. Jimmy had just as many recollections of his own skin, and how it had tingled and flared and how he thought it would fall off of him if he gave into sensation and shivered.

What he remembered most, over all that skin, was Johnny’s grin.

“I thought things were going well, thought I’d ask for something for me, and I looked at him. Then he smiled at me, and it wasn’t a good smile.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I guess you know those pretty well, huh?” Jimmy crossed his arms. “He looked at me like that, and he said, “Never be hot enough, Jimmy” and then he just fucking...” Jimmy flailed his arms to attempt to approximate Johnny’s very elegant disappearance. “Then he just fucking took off. Took the clothes, half in ‘em already by the time he hit the door, and left me in here with this god damn raging – ugh!- and I’m fuckin’ wet and naked, so it’s not like I can hide it or chase the bastard down or anything. I think I coulda gone deaf from the fucking song in my head. Figures that fucking Johnny heard my own shit before I did. They kept me locked in here for hours after that. Maybe.  I dunno. Could’a been days.”

What Jimmy hated about the story was not that it was a story about Johnny torturing Jimmy sexually, but that it seemed layered in his head over the memories of who he and Johnny had been once before. The memories of how talented and worthy the homicidal Johnny had been to him were stacked over how talented and worthy the Johnny that would go on to live with Edgar was. The bewildered anger and pain of being left naked and aching in his trailer fell in line with the screaming, wild panic of being murdered and betrayed, and it make him sick. Made him angry. Made him wrong.

Edgar, surprisingly, had only a single question after hearing Jimmy’s story: “Was this before or after Devi?”

“I don- what?”

“Devi. Was this before or after he messed around with her?”

“I have no idea.  I only heard about it well after it all happened,” Jimmy replied bitterly. “They were making some joke and I heard about it by accident.”

“Oh. Well, it’s not a big deal. I mean, it was a long time ago.”

“Says the guy who’s gonna walk out of here and go home to Johnny.”

“Look, what he did was awful, but… it’s stupid, don’t you think? Devi got over what happened with them and that was however long ago. I mean, how old were you?”

“I can be totally aware that it’s stupid and still be angry.”

Edgar opened his mouth to argue, but managed only to nod, lean back in his bean bag and agree.

“I guess so.” He paused, looking at Jimmy over the rim of the bottle he’d picked up off the floor, and said, “You know I can’t rent him out to you to finish the job or anything, right?”

“Fuck you, Edgar.”

Edgar was the person Jimmy most often cursed with a smile.

“I just had to check.” Edgar was nearly laughing and it hurt to look at.

“I know you can’t do anything,” Jimmy sighed, glancing at a poster on his wall, “and I know I can’t do anything, but, God, I would have given him anything he wanted. And even if you told me that you were giving him exactly that, I wouldn’t be satisfied –and I’m not! - because I don’t know. When you think you’d be great at something, everyone else is doing it wrong.”

“Still?” Edgar questioned Jimmy with no trace of the prior laugh. “After what you just told me, and everything else on top of that?”

“He was a jerk to you too, and you still went after him.”

“Yeah, but I-”

“I know, I know,” Jimmy interrupted. “You were all specially made to tolerate lots of crazy and love it anyway.”

“Not quite like that.”

“But I’m not specially engineered!” Jimmy yelled, smacking his hand a little too hard against his chest. “I’m like this on my own, just normally! No one had to tweak my brain to make me like him, I just do. No one convinced me, and I don’t have to worry about how real I am. I’m just here! I’m naturally like you’re… like you’re whatever you are.” Jimmy slumped against the front of the coffee table. “I go around with this all the time. I’m fine, and you’re fine, and he’s fine, or we’re all horrible and I’m either great with it or I want to punch through walls. I should have just tried to fucking hook up with you.”

“I’m not sure how that would have solved anything.”

“I’d be less this if what I liked was more like you and less like him.”

“I’d really rather you not join that particular club, actually. Nothing personal, the membership just seems to be getting exponential at this point and I just…”

Jimmy laughed, though at what he wasn’t entirely sure, told Edgar to fuck off, and pleasantly found the sentiment returned as he threw his head back for the last drops in the bottle.

Jimmy didn’t know when he fell asleep, but when he woke up, Edgar was sleeping among bottles on the floor and the figure of a young Johnny sat hazily in that damned spot, devilishly grinning.

****

When he returned home the next morning, a little dazed and trying to ignore a slight headache, Edgar found a good portion of the living room broken and rearranged. The people he’d left in said room however, were intact and joking as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Johnny and Banshee turned to face him when they heard him enter and regarded him silently, perhaps wondering why he smelled like Jimmy or why they hadn’t seen him leave. They looked both exhausted and invigorated; Johnny had chopped more uneven sections of his hair off and Banshee was wearing hers in long strings in three new colors. Their clothes were torn badly, though it might have been intentional.  Both had dark make-up circles around their eyes and sported several scratches and bandages. Johnny’s cast had ‘FUCK U!’ written in gigantic rainbow letters over most of the other writing and Banshee’s bindings for her chest looked as though they had been decorated against her will as well.  

“Morning,” Edgar said.

“Morning,” they echoed.

“Have a nice time?”

Banshee and Johnny looked at each other, shrugged and then nodded, muttering things like, “Yeah.”, “I guess.”, and, “It was fine.”

Edgar sighed with some relief. “Good.  I’m gonna go get changed and uh… maybe we’ll clean up later?”

They nodded again in unison, though far less enthusiastically.

Edgar’s clothes reeked of Jimmy and alcohol, and the smells meshed badly with the scent of his own home.

Broken ceramic was strewn over a few of the stairs and streams of toilet paper ran the length of them on both sides. The closet in the hall had been flung open and most of it contents were smashed on the floor or missing. Edgar’s bedroom door had to be shoved considerably more than usual, and he was greeted with the sight of most of his and Johnny’s clothes on the floor, clean and dirty alike. He selected a shirt that he thought he hadn’t worn in a while, tried to ignore the steak knife in the closet door, and pushed his way back out into the hall to survey the damage in the bathroom.

Shockingly, the mirror was intact. The room smelled heavily of perfume, and Edgar suspected more than one bottle had been smashed against the porcelain in the time he’d been gone. There was a new hair dye smear on the sink that corresponded to one of the new colors in Banshee’s hair and a handprint on the wall that matched another. Brushes, combs, scissors and several bottles of medication and vitamins lay scattered on the floor. Surprisingly, a roll of toilet paper was not only in the bathroom, it was on the holder. Edgar left the bathroom assuming that Banshee’s room and Johnny’s were untouched and descended the stairs unsure of what he would be saying.

Johnny and Banshee held small items from around the living room in their hands, though they both looked a little lost and not like they were cleaning at all.

“How was Uncle Jimmy?” Banshee asked. She posed the question as though Edgar had just been over for a friendly visit and hadn’t been escaping a human explosion in his own home.

“He was… fine.”  Edgar made brief eye contact with Johnny and felt distinctly that they’d be discussing Jimmy later that night.

“Shame he won’t talk to me ever again,” Banshee chirped. 

“You’re awfully cheerful about that,” Edgar observed, gathering some dust and broken ball-point pen parts into his hands.

“He only likes me because I look like Nny, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just sayin’.” Banshee shrugged and resumed work on stacking paper by the fireplace.

Edgar glared at Johnny, who only shrugged at the silent accusation.

“Wasn’t me,” he said. “Talk to the closet.”

“You can’t blame this on a closet. Jimmy’s been nothing but great to her! She’s stayed with him when we were having troubles here, and he’s given her anything she’s wanted from him! You and Devi are the only ones who have issues with Jimmy, where else should I think she picked this up from?”

“Our closet, apparently.”

“We went in,” Banshee said. “Well, at least I did.  Nny chickened out and wouldn’t go past the door frame, but we both opened it.”

“Wha- why?”

“We were trying to see if one of us would get killed.”

Edgar glared again, yet no one else in the room responded to his anger.

“And this happened?” he demanded. “She turns into this and it’s because she stood in the closet?”

“Guess so,” Johnny replied casually. “Nothing happened to me, by the way, thanks for caring.”

“Nothing seems wrong with you! This,” he motioned wildly to Banshee, “is wrong!”

“There’s nothing wrong with me!” she yelled over her shoulder.

“There’s nothing wrong with her, Edgar,” Johnny echoed.

“You can’t seriously think that.”

“No, okay, you’re right, there’s something wrong,” Johnny said, nodding. “I just like her better this way.”

****

Edgar leaned into the door of the bedroom when he shut it behind him that evening.  Johnny was quiet and pretending not to notice that Edgar wanted to talk.

“Nny, can I ask you about something?”

Johnny laughed to himself as he pretended to be absorbed with a pair of action figures on the dresser. “Jimmy and a garden hose, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What part do you want to know?”

“Every part? It seemed like sort of an intense thing with the hose and the naked and everything.”

“It probably was.”

Edgar slid away from the door and moved to the edge of the bed. “Probably?”

Johnny shrugged. “You know, for him.”

“And what was it for you?”

“An experiment, I guess.”

“You guess?”

Johnny began to trace the perimeter of the room, dusting his fingers over the tiny details. “It wasn’t totally planned or anything.  It was just an opportunity to see what Jimmy would do, to see how far he would try to get.”

“I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to be comforted by that.”

Johnny’s fingertips rested on the doorknob of the closet. He lingered there, seemingly searching for the right words.  “So what is it about Jimmy, exactly? Devi didn’t bother you.”

“It was just needlessly cruel. I know you guys were hard on him for a while, I get that. I just didn’t think you would do something quite like that.”

Johnny let out of a puff of breath, faintly laughing.  “You knew going into this that in a past life, I killed people. You included.  And here you are having reservations about me teasing Jimmy? When should I collect my stuff and begin life as a hobo?”

“I’m not kicking you out, I’m not even complaining. I just wanted to know why.”

“Well, okay, I told you.”

“Why did you let him get as far as he did?”

“Because he tried to get there.”

Edgar shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense.”

Johnny shrugged and said nothing in response.

“I didn’t think you liked Jimmy,” Edgar said.

“I didn’t.”

“It’s a far way to go, even as an experiment, for someone so picky about being touched.”

The bed shifted when Johnny fell back onto it, though he hadn’t passed out like Edgar had feared. Johnny sighed, twisted his fingers in the string and bracelets on his wrist and spoke to the ceiling.

“There were three of us, okay?” Johnny began. “You know how this is; you were on your own for a while.”

Edgar leaned back to join Johnny in ceiling staring. “Yeah, okay.”

“So until we did all this Homicides stuff, we had two people we could interact with. So shit got crazy. When you think, “This is it, for the rest of my life,” what else will you do?”

“I’m not making moral judgments, I just wanted to know.”

“And I’m telling you. Probably because my brain is being digested. Jimmy was kind of unsubtle about the whole being obsessed with me thing, Devi kind of creeped me out, so I wanted to see what would happen.  It was just as creepy as Devi. Maybe more creepy. Yeah, more creepy.  So I left.  I didn’t like getting touched by either of them in any context, Jimmy was willing to crawl all over me at any opportunity, and neither of them remembered anything like what I did.  So, uh, shit sucked, I guess.”

“I am consistently amazed to hear that rather than attempt to kiss, you all went straight for naked.”

“There was no reason to fool ourselves.”

Edgar shifted to his side, watching Johnny stare at the ceiling. “When you guys first met me, what were you thinking?”

“Just that you knew the same stuff I did. I wasn’t pining away for some sort of romance and jumping on any chance that came my way or anything.”

“That’s good.”

Johnny laughed.  It was weaker than it should have been, but still contagious and once Edgar started laughing, the conversation quickly spiraled into jokes at the expense of Todd and Pepito. Johnny held up well for a while, before he fell asleep in the middle of a nonsensical knock-knock joke about Cerberus. When Edgar opened the door to check on Banshee, he found her sitting on the floor just outside.

“Hi,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

“He really likes you, huh?”

“Were you listening?”

“Tess doesn’t believe you,” Banshee replied. “Still, it seems nice.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” She stood up and walked back to her room.

“Tell what?”

“Good night, Edgar.”

****

If she hadn't been listening before, Edgar would certainly have given her the inspiration to do it.  Ever since seeing Johnny's notebook and then being forced to grow shortly thereafter, Banshee wanted to know what made Johnny and Edgar function. What part of a relationship between a guy who was willingly horrible and bafflingly nice man made for 'love'? Was it going to be like her own relationship with Johnny and Edgar just enjoyed fighting as long as he could dish out something equivalent? Were Edgar and Johnny each other's stress relievers? Was Edgar really going to keep caring about someone who had willingly harmed her and then helped her trash his entire house? The more she thought about it, the more the red star lingered at the back of her mind. The more she felt the red star, the more she had to know, so she decided she was going to find out what Johnny and Edgar did when they didn't think they had an audience.

They never left the bedroom door open. There was never going to be a time when Banshee was going to sit by a magical cracked door and just happen upon a moment to see what truly went on. She was going to have to settle for audio only, or find a way to sneak in. It had only been a few weeks since she was small enough to fit under the bed, but she was definitely too big for that to go unnoticed now.

The red star brought her the answer. The closet. Both Edgar and Johnny were a little nervous about it and wouldn't go near it even if they saw it open just so. She crawled in one afternoon while Johnny and Edgar were having something that passed as lunch. The room still reflected nothing but bright and empty at her, and was comfortable enough that she brought a snack to tide her over until... until.

The wait was long, and she was sick of trailmix by the end of it, but she got what she came for when Johnny walked into the room talking to Edgar, who was following close behind. It wasn't a perfect view of them, but she didn't need it to be perfect.

"It's not important, I'll get over it."

"It is important, I - do you know where Banshee is?"

Johnny shrugged and continued fishing around on top of a dresser for something. "Her room, I guess."

She saw Edgar turn and walk out of her sliver of a frame and then heard the bedroom door close.

"Edgar, what are you doing? I just came in to get-" Johnny turned from whatever he was picking up and into Edgar hugging him tightly. Banshee saw Johnny's whole body tense up.

"I'm not going to lose you again," Edgar said firmly. "Especially not to something that's in Tess' head and not your own."

"I already told you, I'm fine." Johnny pushed Edgar away, though only enough to get Edgar's chin off of his shoulder. He seemed so much weaker than he'd been when they had had control of the house.

"And I'm supposed to think you're fine when you spend so much time asleep? Or while you're telling incoherent stories?"

"I don't want you to worry about it."

"I'm going to worry! This is what I do!" He sighed, and brushed a few fingers down Johnny's jaw. "You think if you just say I can't worry that I won't?"

"It was worth a shot." Johnny's resistance weakened and his shoulders relaxed.

"Nny, I pretty much exist to make sure you're okay. I can't do that if you're just claiming to be 'fine' all the time."

"What, you want me in some kind of peril?"

"No, but you obviously ARE in some."

"You think you can help?"

"I don't know. You have to tell me what's going on first."

"There are things in my head,” Johnny said. He didn't sound angry or scared, just like he was stating fact. 'The sky is blue, Banshee broke my arm, there are things in my head.'

"And?" Edgar leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Johnny's.

"And... that sucks?"

Edgar laughed at him and got them nose to nose as well. “I think you’re trying too hard.”

“Fuck you.”

“Listen, I have to worry, and I want to help. It's just how I am. I promised to make you happy.” Edgar’s eyes reflected something different when he spoke to Johnny like that. The eyes he watched the rest of the world with were something different entirely.

“It’s a promise now?” Johnny kept his eyes closed, though he was still nose to nose with Edgar.

“One I made to myself, at least.”

“I am happy. Really.” Johnny kept his words short. He sounded like he wanted to run away and that he was too weak to fight all this closeness the way he always did around everyone else.

“You’re happy with all this stuff in your brain?” Edgar ran his fingers over the back of Johnny’s head.

“No, I’m not happy about that, but I’m fine.” Johnny opened his eyes. “I said it was your turn anyway.”

“Funny thing about me being happy,” Edgar said, brushing his cheek against Johnny’s jaw, “is that it requires that you be happy too.”

“That sounds a little dependent of you, Edgar.” Johnny flinched, but he hadn’t pulled away from Edgar at all since the initial shove. Banshee had never seen Johnny stand up to being adored for more than a few moments and found it hard to look away, even when something in her was telling her she should.

“Maybe. You’re just important.”

“Yeah, but so are you.”

“Careful, you’ll make me think I matter.” Banshee had seen bliss in people before – Jimmy when he played a guitar heavy song, audience members when Johnny pointed at them, Tenna when she ate at the Indian restaurant that made everyone else sick – she recognized bliss when she saw it, and Edgar got his from Johnny.

What Banshee saw was what Tess wanted. She wanted this particular Edgar, the one who adored his partner and not the one who bickered or swore creatively or played a keyboard. Banshee wondered how Tess even knew this Edgar existed.

“You do matter,” Johnny said.

“I know, I was joking.”

“No, really.” Johnny looked intently at Edgar, as though trying to burn ‘you matter’ into his skin. “It’s not something I say often, I guess.”

“Ever,” Edgar corrected, clearly amused.

“Not something I say ever.” It almost scared Banshee that Johnny bowed to this so easily.

“There you go.”

“If I don’t ever say it, though,” Johnny said, letting his gaze fall to somewhere over Edgar’s shoulder, “then what about everything Tess said?”

“What about it?”

“It sounds like she was right to me.”

Edgar took a step back. “Oh, no, not you too. How am I going to look when I have to convince even you that you're not a psychopath trying to hurt me?”

“It's not about how you look. It's...”

“It's what? Nny, this is … Why don't you believe me? I thought I told you I don't care about what Tess thinks about me or you or us or anything.”

Johnny shrugged and turned his face away. Instead of Edgar, his eyes scanned some posters near the bedroom ceiling. Banshee hoped he wasn't looking for her. “I do believe you. That's the problem. I'm sure you're very sincere. Hell, I know you are.”

Edgar frowned, and leaned closer to Johnny, squinting in disbelief. “Are you... Do you really think you're bad for me? Is that what this is?”

Johnny's only answer was a sigh and feigned interest in the ceiling.

“Johnny, please.”

Johnny looked back into Edgar's face. “The problem isn't you, Edgar. There's nothing wrong with you. You're good, generous, honest, painfully responsible and compassionate, and so well-adjusted for someone in your situation that it has been known to disturb me on a very deep level and keep me up at night. I am not any of those things. I'm an asshole, and not only do I know that, I sort of like it.”

“And... I kind of like you that way.”

Johnny shoved Edgar's shoulder, but without any real effort or malice behind it, and gave a weak smile. “But you shouldn't, you moron. Even Tess has figured out that it's bad to hook up with assholes, and she's fucked up to the point that it rubs off on other people.”

“Listen to me, okay?” Edgar smiled and squeezed Johnny's shoulders. “I think that you think that I'm smart enough to decide what I can handle. And I can handle you being an asshole. I'm a nice guy, apparently. I can handle being the nice guy with the guy who is an asshole, because I like the asshole despite – or maybe because of -his asshole-ery. I'm allowed to decide without a gun to my nice guy head that I want to be with the asshole. You, even. God, that was messier than I meant it to be.”

“Yeah, I'm losing track of your noble intentions to sweep me off my ass-feet in all that vocabulary.” Johnny was smiling a little, and some of his usual personality was coming back to his voice. Banshee was filled with simultaneous relief and desire to punch him in the teeth.

“Basically,” Edgar said, “I can take care of myself. I think it's up to me to decide if I want to subject myself to the abject horror of being with you. Unless you don't think I know what's good for me?”

Johnny looked conflicted and shifted his weight a few times before he answered. “I don't think you do. I think if you'd had someone to compare me to, you wouldn't be here. Or I wouldn't, whichever.”

Edgar laughed. “Who on in the world would I compare to you?”

Johnny tried to do something, maybe some kind of gesture, but ended up just flailing his cast weakly. “Anyone. Anyone normal? Anyone not an asshole?”

“But I want you. And you keep telling me you're happy here.”

“I am.”

"And I'm happy with you here.”

“I know, but-”

Edgar stepped back angrily and blocked some of what Banshee could see. “Do you think I'm an idiot?”

Johnny blinked. “No?”

“Then why don't you think I can recognize when I'm happy with something that isn't hurting me? I'm not some simpleton you dragged off the street drooling on himself.”

“You trust everyone! You trust Tess! You trusted me before you ever should have – when I was being a complete dick to you just to see how much of it you would take!”

Edgar crossed his arms. “Do you want to leave?”

Banshee's chest tightened as she tried to get a better view without making noise.

“No, I don't. I'm...” Johnny exhaled. “...happy here.”

“Yeah, I'm happy too. Why are we even having this conversation if nothing's changing?”

“Maybe I'm worried about you!"

“I'm not ten – or even fifteen – years old anymore! I think I can handle myself with my own partner, no matter how supernatural he may or may not be.”

Johnny sighed and tried half-heartedly to turn away from Edgar. Edgar stopped him.

“Thanks, okay?” Edgar said softly. “For being worried.”

“Yeah.”

“It's okay. I know how bad you probably could be for me, but I'm still choosing to have you here. Some people smoke, some people drink, I have you.”

“So I'll be your cancer? Charming.”

Banshee watched them smile at each other but had to turn away when it looked like there would be more in the cards. She sat for a long time with her eyes and ears covered until she dared to listen and heard only the television downstairs. She wasn't sure if she was disappointed.

****

As time went by, Edgar found an odd inconsistency in Banshee's sponge-like mythology absorption.

The girl remembered everything Johnny had ever told her, down to the fractured crossover disaster he'd given her as her first introduction to the concept. She knew which gods were aspects of what and who and knew how they were all related. She knew every story Johnny had ever told her about demons, Hell, Hades, Valhalla, and any other place that might be seen as mildly to extremely unpleasant to people currently alive.

The only story of Edgar's she ever remembered was that he had once been to Heaven.

He told her others, he was sure of it. Of the man who was just assumed into Heaven and stories of the Heavens conceived by outside the Hebrew texts. At first, he thought that perhaps he just wasn't an effective story teller, so he asked Johnny, only for the sake of an experiment, to narrate something to Banshee regarding any Heaven at all as long as there was no way it could double as a Hell.

Despite a broken arm, Johnny gave an impressive performance of every kind of Heaven he could conceive of.  For the few minutes he told the stories, Johnny’s recent trouble staying conscious vanished and he was the same mean teenager that had invaded Edgar’s house years ago.

Days later, Banshee failed to remember the details of the story in any form, and barely recalled even being told it. Johnny was mildly offended that she could forget the lone time when he sat down and didn't tell her about bloodshed, but he found the entire thing interesting objectively. Unfortunately, he knew just as little about what to do with it as Edgar did.

Edgar quizzed Banshee on the things she knew every so often, trying to catch her off guard; if she was just faking forgetting about Heaven to prove she was edgy or weird or somehow like Johnny, Edgar would find out.

He casually mentioned judgment in conversation over dishes, with predictable results.

"I've always sort of thought the Anubis method was on target," Banshee had replied. "‘You go on, or my associate here eats your soul.’"

"There's no chance for any kind of redemption then," Edgar said, passing her the next pan to dry.

"Hence trying not to fuck up in real life."

Edgar sent her a disapproving look at 'fuck', but said nothing against it. He couldn’t feign innocence as only part of the collective that had taught her that word and its many companions, though he suspected that most of it was Johnny's doing.

"Anubis doesn't sound terribly forgiving," he said.

"It's not like it's all him. There's a whole jury there, and Thoth is on that crap making sure Anubis isn't just tossing you to your death because he doesn't like your hair or whatever. It's fair."

"So you either exist or you don't, in that mentality."

"Yeah."

"You don't think a better Hell would be that the people feel it? You know, forever? You still exist, but you exist in a bad place because you did bad things?"

Banshee laughed. "It's not up to me to decide what Hell should feel like. Wasn't that Johnny's job once? Or maybe Pepito's?"

She'd steered him entirely in a direction he wasn't intending to go, so he dragged the topic out by force.

"But there's no place to go to rest in that world. It's still work and daily toil after you die. There's no paradise."

"Paradise?"

"Yeah, some kind of Heaven."

She blinked at him over a frying pan and seemed to be processing before some cogs spun into place.

"Oh, right," she said. Her tone flattened completely, as though she were being puppeted by a bad actor. "You were there once."

"That's it?" Edgar asked.

She blinked, and her tone returned to normal. "What do you mean?"

"That's all you know about it?"

"What else is there?"

He wasn't sure if he'd caught her, or if she'd outwitted him, but the situation struck him either way. On one hand, she could be actively trying to suppress any knowledge of a peaceful afterlife, and on the other, something could be suppressing it for her.

In an incredibly rare instance, Edgar resolved to visit Pepito on his own, and had very little inclination to take Johnny with him.

He made some excuse or another as to why he was going out, though he couldn't remember whatever it was nearly the moment it left his mouth. He'd gotten so good at excuses lately, thanks to Tess. He took cuts through the yards of his neighbors to avoid passing Jimmy's parking lot on his way there, and made sure to steer clear of windows facing him from the school.

Pepito's porch was warped more dramatically than the last time Edgar had set foot on it, probably because of what Pepito stored beneath the floorboards.

The doorbell sounded thirsty when he pushed it.

Pepito answered cheerily, yet another of his endless supply of cookies in his left hand.

"Hi there!" he chirped, waving with the crumbling snack rather than use his free hand. "What brings you here... alone?" He leaned out of the doorway and checked in several directions for a sign of someone else, but found only Edgar.

"I came to ask you something," Edgar answered.

"Do you want to come in?" Pepito smiled and waved the cookie invitingly.

"Not really. I'm hoping this won't take too long, actually."

"Allll right," Pepito said, cramming the remainder of the cookie in his mouth. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Banshee is-"

"Cerberus' balls, do you guys still think I shat that kid upon the globe or what?"

Edgar flinched at the entirety of Pepito's sentence, but continued, "No, let me finish."

"Please do." Pepito braced his shoulder against the door frame and crossed his arms.

"She seems to have a hard time with the Heaven aspect of mythology."

"Most people do. Seems everybody thinks they're entitled to it."

"That's not what I mean. She just doesn't seem to pick it up."

"I'm listening."

"Pepito, she knows everything about Hell. She knows every detail Nny gave her, from every conceivable culture, but the best she can do with 'Heaven' is that I went there once."

Edgar wished he had brought some kind of prop to wave around. He was fidgeting like a kindergartener in an agonizingly long school play, rocking on his heels from built up nerves.

"Sounds like she's just fucking with you," Pepito said.

"And if she isn't?"

"Then you'd need to talk to someone from upstairs. In case you've missed it, that's not exactly my department."

Edgar sighed. "I don't have anyone from that department! I used to have a book and it stopped dead when Johnny did."

"And you got a girl instead," Pepito muttered.

"Yes."

"Then," he pushed himself off of the doorframe and assumed his full posture in the door, "I'd say your girl is from upstairs herself."

"Wouldn't she be some kind of expert on that instead then? I mean, we thought she might be here instead of the book, but she acts more like she's your kid than a gift from above."

"I can assure you she'd be worse if she came from me."

"Sorry to offend," Edgar replied, rolling his eyes.

"If she's from them," Pepito said, pointing at nothing, "then they probably don't want you to know that, right? They hid that book from you, just like I obscured Hell's key for your other half there."

"So they made her an expert on Hell to throw us on your trail instead."

"It'd be my guess, yeah."

"And we still don't know why they sent her."

"Oh, really?"

"Do you know something you should be sharing with me?" Edgar eyed Pepito suspiciously.

"No, sir," Pepito replied with an insincere bow. "I just thought you'd have found out by now."

"Guess for me."

"Excuse me?"

"Guess," Edgar said. "I’m pretending this isn’t a stupid game that you told her to play with us. Give me your best estimate as to why Banshee was even sent here."

"To fuck with you."

"Okay, now once more with effort." Edgar shifted his weight and found himself borrowing some mannerisms from Johnny that he hadn't been truly aware of internalizing until now.

"My guess," Pepito said, conjuring another cookie, and speaking to it thoughtfully, "is that they didn't modify their plan when Johnny forced me to modify mine."

"When Johnny came back."

"That would be what I mean, yes."

"So they... were going to send Banshee when Johnny died?"

"Some kid that looks just like him and knows everything about Hell?" Pepito said, picking a morsel of chocolate from between his teeth. "Sounds about right to me."

"One day," Edgar said, gazing into the dark windows of the school nearby, "these people will stop doing things to me just because they can."

"And on that day," Pepito replied with a chocolate-coated grin, "we'll be much closer friends. Have a nice day, Edgar."

The door closed and, for once, Edgar didn't feel strongly about it one way or another.

****

“Banshee?”  Edgar stood over the couch where Banshee sat sloppily embroidering something onto a skirt. He had to call her name several times before she seemed to notice him. She said nothing when she finally heard him, but blinked up at him, expecting him to say something more.

“I talked to Pepito,” Edgar said.

“Really? I thought you hated him.”  She returned to her needle and thread.

“He told me he isn’t responsible for you.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Do you remember anything from before we picked you up?”

She continued in her steady rhythm, still concentrating on the patterns in her thread.  “I don’t think so,” she answered.

“He thinks you might be from Heaven.”

Banshee flinched, and her embroidery came to a sudden halt. At first, Edgar thought he had landed on something she’d been keeping secret.  She kept silent, and then very slowly began to resume work on her skirt.  When her concentrated rhythm seemed to return to its original speed a few moments later, Edgar touched her shoulder.  She jumped in surprise and only just managed to avoid stabbing herself with the needle.

“Whoa! Don’t scare me like that!” she said, trying to stabilize her breath. “I didn’t even see you standing there!”

“Banshee, we’ve been talking for the last half a minute or so.” Edgar expected a protest or a shocked expression, but instead, Banshee set her sewing aside and looked intently at him. 

“What did we say?” she asked.

“I told you I talked to Pepito,” Edgar said. He tried to put as much weight into the words as they would hold.  “And that he thinks you came from Heaven.”

“You were there once,” Banshee responded predictably.

“Were you?”

“I don’t know anything about it. What is it?”

“I’ve tried to tell you. Hell, Johnny’s tried to tell you.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“How am I supposed to know if I’ve been there if I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be remembering?”

“There’s nothing before you woke up in the van?”

Banshee made a face, straining to remember, as she looked at the arm of the couch.  She looked uncomfortable and worried.

“If you’re hiding something,” Edgar said, “now would be a good time to say so.”

“I’m not.”

There was a skidding sound from the stairs. Banshee and Edgar both looked to see Johnny crouched on the steps, peering out at them from between the rails he had a tight grip on.

“Why are you even asking her?” Johnny asked.

“Oh, right, I forgot,” Edgar said, dramatically hitting his forehead. “You know everything. I don’t know what came over me.  Do you remember anything inside Banshee’s brain from before we picked her up?”

“It’s cute that you think you’re funny,” Johnny answered. “You don’t remember her telling us where she was from?”

“Obviously not, hence the conversation I was trying to have.”

“I didn’t tell you anything!” Banshee protested.  Edgar looked accusingly at her, but she was focused on Johnny.

“I asked you where you were from,” Johnny said, pointing at Banshee through the bars.

“...and I looked at the roof of the van,” Banshee finished.

“So what Pepito said makes more sense then,” Edgar said. “With everything else, it fits. We just need to figure out what you’re here for. And why they didn’t want us to suspect.”

Banshee sunk into the couch cushions, bringing her chin to rest on the arm of the couch.  “Does it matter?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know?” Edgar asked.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Johnny mocked, “Edgar will only send you to the pound if you’re a mutt angel-girl.”

“Nny, shut up,” Edgar shot back.

“Angel?” Banshee asked with a tone of disgust in her voice. “Can’t I be Valkyrie or something?”

“Pepito didn’t say anything about angels,” Edgar said with an annoyed sigh. “I think all the angels up there are of the naked baby variety anyway.”

“Which she practically was when we found her,” Johnny said with a smirk.

“I don’t want to be an angel,” Banshee said distantly.

“You’re not!”

“She could be a demon,” Johnny suggested.  “Some kind of succubus.”

Edgar and Banshee both looked ill at Johnny’s suggestion, prompting laughter from the stairs. Johnny said nothing else, but remained on the stairs with a satisfied smile.

 When she and Edgar recovered, Banshee returned to worry.

“Am I not even a person?” she asked.

“Don’t say that,” Edgar said. “Of course you are.”

“Maybe I’m not human! I don’t have any parents and I just appeared one day!”

“Hey, that’s us too, remember?”

“But I wasn’t around before. No one remembers me.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Edgar said.

Almost in response, Johnny began humming and Edgar recognized the tune as Johnny’s song immediately. Occasionally, Johnny hummed the song to himself just to be sure he still had it, but this seemed to be different.  When Edgar glanced at Johnny, Johnny sent him a look from behind the railing that set him off balance inside.  Edgar looked back to Banshee.

“Banshee, do you know that song?” Edgar asked, nodding toward Johnny.

“Of course.”

Johnny shifted tunes abruptly to Edgar’s song, which Banshee said she also knew, just as she recognized Jimmy’s, Devi’s and Tenna’s as Johnny hummed them. 

“Do you know yours?”

 Banshee responded to Edgar’s question with a baffled stare.

“Mine?”

“Your song.”

“There’s one that’s mine?”

Johnny still hadn’t moved, but Edgar swore he felt Johnny’s interest pique.

“The ones you knew just now, those are ours. They, uh, … come from us, I guess.”

“Oh,” Banshee said, surprised. “I thought everyone knew those.”

“Technically,” Edgar said, rubbing his arm, “everyone you know knows them, but still.”

“So the stuff I hear all the time actually comes from places.” There was only the optimism of discovery in Banshee’s tone and no question at all. She quickly began asking where the songs on Johnny’s old tapes and CDs were from and Edgar had to try his hand at explaining what had happened to music when he didn’t completely understand it himself.  Johnny offered no help at all and seemed content to watch from the stairs.

“So how do I know which one comes from me?” Banshee asked following Edgar’s shaky recount of the situation.

“I think it’s one of those things where you just ‘do.’”

“Everything sounds like it’s coming from the same place to me. I can’t single out any of them. I guess you sound louder, but... yeah.”

“Is there one you hear all the time? Or one that you really like?”

“All of them.”

Edgar quizzed Banshee on her feelings and perceptions of the songs she heard. He asked her to hum some that didn’t belong to anyone they knew, but Johnny recognized all as songs that already existed.  Banshee seemed particularly disappointed about one involving stars not belonging to her. Her recitation of the songs in her head slowly faded into words and she began to sing along to the tunes she hoped belonged to her. She sang about parties and dancing and rising above abstract concepts. She sang in German and several languages Edgar couldn’t identify.  Johnny laughed at a few of her choices, and muttered the occasional lyrics along with her. 

“If I don’t have one of these,” Banshee said desperately after another failed song attempt, “then I’m not a person. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”

“It took a long time for anyone to hear Johnny’s,” Edgar offered. “He had no idea what it sounded like until just a while before we found you.”

“Mine is probably just words,” Banshee whined.

“It’s more likely to be obnoxious techno,” Johnny said from the stairs.

“It could be anything,” Edgar reassured her, “but I’m sure it’s there. Even if you’re sent from somewhere else. Pepito said they were going to send you when Johnny died…”

“Banshee is a failed Grim Reaper. Excellent.”

“Nny, seriously.”

“You can’t even pretend that’s not a possibility.”

“He’s right!” Banshee yelled from the couch. “I can’t swing a scythe! I’ve never killed anything! I don’t even have a hooded cape! I actually do suck at being a grim reaper! What if that’s what I was supposed to do?!”

“Calm down, calm down,” Edgar said. “We didn’t even find you until after Johnny came back, and even then, you were a little girl. You can’t be a reaper.”

“I was supposed to do something,” Banshee muttered.  She looked up at Edgar in a panic and screamed, “I’m here for a reason, and I might never figure out what it is!”

Edgar’s attempts at calming Banshee from then on failed, and from that day she continued to change, but far more rapidly.  Day by day she grew wilder, more unpredictable, louder and a little more frightening.

Sometimes, Edgar thought, reflecting upon where you've been in comparison to where you are is a bit maddening. What started with a relatively innocent little girl called Stephanie was shaping up to involve stubborn and odd Banshee. Dark pigtails to stringy, rainbow mohawk. Edgar's old T-shirts to homemade disasters of the sewing craft with images of goddesses and traffic signs sewn into every piece.

Edgar suspected that Johnny rather approved of the direction Banshee had taken herself, and Edgar liked to think that he did, too, but the tattoo on her arm really made him think twice.

Since Banshee couldn’t just be typical, she never ventured anywhere near the 'hide it from my (not-) parents' stage. Instead, arm still red, shiny and raw on the day she got it, she slid on her socks into Edgar's hip in the kitchen and dramatically flashed the tattoo in his face.

"Tattoo!" she announced loudly, in case Edgar had any hope left of it being marker.

"You're kidding me."

"No," she said, shaking her head and regarding the inked stitches on her bicep, "I don't think I am."

"Is that... stitches?"

"Uh-huh!"

"Why that?"

"You, of course!"

Moments after that, she fluttered off to show her newest body modification to Johnny, leaving Edgar feeling slightly sick in the kitchen.

A memorial tattoo for a man who is not yet dead, but may feel like dying from the very sight of his tribute.

Part of the problem, he thought, was that it was not a tattoo for Edgar, but for Edgar V, the faux dead man who played the keyboard for the Homicides. She'd gotten a fan tattoo for the character Edgar played on stage.

 He couldn’t manage to form the words to ask her where she’d had it done.

****

In an effort to clear up what was wrong with one girl he knew, Edgar tried to turn to another.

She was sitting in the booth against the wall, and appeared to be talking to herself.  Edgar watched Tess flex her hands and look bitter for several moments before he approached her.  The zipper on the coat he had flung over his arm clicked against the table before she realized he was there.

“Edgar! I didn’t see you there.”

“Clearly.” 

He took a seat across from her and a waitress asked him if he wanted any coffee almost immediately.  He asked for some water and told the girl he wouldn’t be staying long.

“I think you know why I’m here,” Edgar said, folding his arms in front of him. 

“Yeah, but-”

“No.  There isn’t any ‘but’, Tess.  You told me you’d tell me what you knew if I agreed to listen to you ranting against Johnny. I think I’ve listened to my fair share, and you’ve stalked us more than enough for me to earn it.”

“I know, I know,” she whined, clutching her mug in distress. “But I just can’t tell you everything, it’ll-”

“Then don’t tell me everything.  I don’t want people hurt, but you and Johnny both fall under the category of ‘people’, so you need to help me out with even a little.”

“It’s after him,” Tess said quickly.

“And you know this?”

“Yes. I can’t tell you why.”

“But I should trust you when you say this?”

The waitress brought Edgar’s drink and delivered a small speech about the soup of the day.  Edgar told her again that he wasn’t going to be staying long, but she didn’t seem to hear him and said she’d give him more time with the menu.

“Yes,” Tess answered. “You really should.”

“You haven’t really given me good reason to.”

“Edgar, I swear.  It’s after him and it has been since it noticed he was getting worse.”

“Worse?”

“He’s going fucking nuts, isn’t he? Says crazy shit? Looks at a random woman in black and has a meltdown?”

“You’re not exactly random.”

“But I should be!” She slammed her mug on the table and startled the young family across the aisle. “Edgar, I should be just in the background.  If it was so fucking important that I be here too… You don’t want him to remember this stuff, do you?”

“No. It was sort of a condition for him even agreeing to this life in the first place.”

“Then I really should be random if I wasn’t meant to be best friends with you guys.  It’s sick that he gets what he has.  How a person like that found one decent person who would save him and who would regenerate all of this for him and I found nothing – shit, even – I’ll never understand.”

“I didn’t regenerate everything. Just him.”

Tess scoffed.  “Because that’s really the issue at hand. Come on, Edgar.”

“It’s not his fault, okay?” Edgar said. “He didn’t ask me to do it, he didn’t even give me a concrete answer.  I was just a guy who felt bad and this is what happened!  If you’re so angry about what Johnny has, it’s me you should hate so much.”

“Well I don’t, all right?” Tess hid her face in her hands.  “It was never meant to be like this at all. I was just going to get back at him and get what I was due. That’s it.  I never meant to … but you were just…”

“As much as I’m curious about what I was, you’re stalling.”  Edgar took a drink of the water and stared at her until she stopped looking devastated.

“What else do you want? It’s following him, and it wants him and-”

“What does it want him for? Why do you show up not only unannounced, but impossibly, everywhere we go? Do you know anything about Banshee? I’ll take anything.”

“It wants…”  She stopped, and closed her eyes.

“Tess.”

“It wants to be with him again.  The person he was, the way he was.”  She opened her eyes.  “The guy I remember, Edgar!  It had him once and with all this mess with the dying and the reborn and the whatever, it was severed from him. But it’s grown again and it wants back now.”

“And you know this how?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Tess, please.”

“I can’t! I don’t know what it will do to me!”  She jolted upright and stood there shaking, despite the stares from the other diners.

“Okay, okay, Tess, sit down,” Edgar said, trying to tug on her sleeve.

“You know what the best part of this is?!” she screamed, tears forming in her eyes.  “I bet the only way you’ll ever find anything out is if Johnny talks to me!”

“What?” He released her sleeve and she pulled her arm away quickly, as though she only then realized he’d had a hold on it.

“He ‘knows things’ doesn’t he? He’s ‘amazing’ and ‘talented’ and ‘can read people’, right?”  She glared at him, accusing and desperate.  Her shoulders were shaking and Edgar saw terror in her eyes. 

“Tess, please, sit down, you’re scaring people. You’re scaring me. Johnny said it had you, that he thought it was in you. Is he right?”

“Isn’t he ‘incredible’, Edgar?! Didn’t he know everything that was in you the second he looked at you?!  He knows exactly what’s going on, dammit! And he’s LYING TO YOU!”

Just as Edgar was about to lead Tess away, she became abruptly calm.

“We’ll see you later,” she said coolly. 

She left the building without paying for her tea.  Edgar was left standing at the booth in a panic.  After a moment of consideration, he threw a few dollars on the table and ran out after Tess.  When the automatic doors slid open all too slowly, Tess was nowhere to be seen. 

He ran back to his house, suspecting the worst and wishing he was in the habit of actually locking his doors. When he crashed through the front door, Johnny and Banshee jumped and stared at him from their seats in the living room.  The campy science fiction show they’d been watching announced that they’d “found the problem, captain.”

“Are you okay?” Johnny asked.

“Um, yeah,” Edgar said, brushing some hair from his forehead. “Yeah, I guess I’m fine.”

“How did it go with Mistress of the Night? She stalk you home or something?” Johnny leaned back into the couch in an attempt to see behind Edgar. Banshee seemed to be unaware that she was kneading the pink recliner’s arm with her fingernails as she stared.

“She… she says that thing is after you because you’re going crazy.”

“So I’m not going crazy because it’s following me? Because that’s what it feels like.”

“Maybe it’s both, I don’t know.” Edgar’s heart was still catching up with him and his throat felt dry and sore.  “Okay, listen, from now on, the doors are always locked, right?”

“It’s been unlocked for months,” Banshee said softly. “She’s never come in before.”

“Just humor me, okay?”

“Sit down or something,” Johnny said. “You look like a psycho.”

Edgar sat next to Johnny on the couch, and let out a long puff of air.

“She suddenly freaked out, Nny. I was talking to her and suddenly she was screaming. If she’s really got it in her…”

“It sounds about right,” Johnny said distantly.

“What does it do? What did it do to you?”

Johnny laughed while watching the floor.  He glanced at Banshee, who looked on the verge of tears and then turned to Edgar, sporting a charming half-smile.

“It made me kill you,” he said.

****

He didn’t like sleeping at all, let alone this much. It would have been unpleasant even without dreaming, but it seemed all his subconscious wanted to do was eat him alive with dream images of people he had been, things he had done and voices he might not have totally lost.

The days were so full recently. Banshee had parties with Johnny celebrating nothing, and he happily participated in them as much as his still broken arm allowed.  Sometimes, he thought Banshee was purposefully testing the limits of Jimmy’s workmanship on the cast. She, more than anyone else, would appreciate seeing Johnny’s arm mend in all the wrong places.  Still, evil intent or no, she seemed to spark a lot of what he usually found in the closet.

Alone in that house, tearing the skin off of someone who had cut in line at the sandwich counter, and Johnny heard voices.  Voices that were telling him to run, to escape, that something was coming and he might just outrun it if he started now. They were the same voices that told him skinning people was a good idea in the first place, so he made a judgment call and ignored them.

The next voice was familiar, was real, was human.  Edgar.

The dreams had them doing all sorts of things before the end – talking to a Banshee who shouldn’t exist, discussing the death Edgar had not endured, visiting the home they didn’t share and the trailer Jimmy didn’t inhabit.  In every case, though, the end was the same. Johnny found himself unable to breathe while Edgar talked casually about something on television. In those moments, he tried desperately to die and wake up at the same time.  Only in Johnny’s last second did Edgar ever seem to notice there was a problem.

“Oh shit! Hang on, I’ll fix it!”

And then nothing but waking up.

Whether it was the way his last life had ended he didn’t know.  His brain certainly wanted him to think so, but until he managed to figure what the closet was attempting to do to him, he wouldn’t know for sure. 

He woke up next to Edgar hours later.

****

“Part of our solution is sitting here.”

“In what?” Edgar looked up from the bits of confetti from one of Johnny and Banshee’s impromptu parties in his hands to see Johnny staring intently at the closet door.

“In there.”

Edgar straightened his back, ready to intercept Johnny’s path to the closet if need be. “Johnny, no.  Nothing good has happened because of that fucking closet.”

“And nothing good has come of Tess, or Banshee.”

Edgar dusted the confetti from his hands and let it flutter to the floor among discarded clothes.

“That isn’t true,” he said.

Johnny shrugged, approaching the closet. “It’s close enough.”

Edgar stopped him from touching the doorknob.

“What do you think you’ll get from this?”

“Edgar, fucking pay attention! Banshee was the one who found this and opened it.  Tess shows up around the same time, Banshee likes her… What won’t we get from this? I’m just going to go in and stay until my brains are plastered to the walls.”

“I don’t want to do it again.”

“I didn’t ask you to. Stay out here and keep an eye on my brains if you want.”

“No, I have to see it with you. If you’re going in, I have to go.”

“Edgar the Martyr. Make up your mind.”

“I’m still going. Just to make sure you’re okay.”

Johnny gave Edgar no time to consider what he had said and flung the door open. He latched onto Edgar’s wrist and dragged him inside the room and over the threshold they’d never completely crossed before.

The view was simultaneously frightening and comforting.  Edgar could see his Johnny layered over the old one and they both expressed a state of wonder at meeting so entirely. Johnny’s gaze darted around as though following a fly, and his grip on Edgar’s arms tightened. Both of Johnny stared out at the room with wide eyes, and both linked to Edgar.  Edgar felt part of his own old self sitting under his consciousness, but the old brain imparted nothing new. 

The sound of a regular tone hung over the air.  He was seeing sounds, hearing colors. The sounds of the closet’s accumulated songs felt tangible and solid. Johnny’s song spiked angrily among the tune in the closet, and Edgar heard his own just floating along, solid, holding on, unaffected by its immersion in other sound. Over the colors of static, voices fell into the mix.

“Pull me close look into my eyes
Smile at me when you stick in the knife”

“Everything is in here,” Johnny said. Edgar could actually see Johnny’s voice being smeared around them as the words left his lips.

“Everything?” His own words carried color too, though they didn’t match Johnny’s colors well.

“Everything I know.”

“We're bleeding into a cup
when we've got enough
We'll just paint the walls
And we don't care how much it hurts
You think you're cursed it's what you deserve”

“You can’t- I have to get you out of here if-”

Johnny shook his head and his hair blurred out his face for a moment.

“'Cause you're talking rock and roll
Walking karaoke soul”

“I’ll never remember it.  It’s just passing through, it’s scenery. Trees, fences, highways signs. Forgettable.  It’s sick and ugly scenery, but it won’t stay long.”

“Then what’s here? Tell me, and I’ll remember what you need for you.”  The other set of memories grew warm when Edgar made the offer.

“I can see you desperate to please
Let me treat you for your disease”

“This is everything. This isn’t just what I lost, this is everything.”  Johnny’s eyes closed and the colors and voices blurred as they rushed around him.

“What about Tess, Nny? Banshee? What does this have to do with all that?”

“I would have killed you. You were so lucky. I was even luckier…”

“Your wolf suit is wearing thin and your real skin looks like it never bleeds
And you're playing to the crowd as the ship goes down
comforting me”

Johnny spoke with a pained fondness in his voice, and looked on the verge of tears. Edgar tried to shake Johnny’s shoulders, but found his head filling with things that made it hard to move; things like everything that had previously been the other Edgar’s head.

“You have to try to think, Nny, what good is this?” He felt disconnect. He felt the wall that had existed between them in the life that blurred around them now and it made it difficult for him to reach properly, to not feel a tinge of worry that Johnny would not want to be touched.

“It’s everything,” Johnny said. “Every Freezie I’ve ever had, every show I ever watched, every feeling I ever bent and twisted into an imitation of itself. Every time you almost died for my mangled wishes. The way things looked in my head and how I could never get it out on paper. Everything I already knew. My name.  How to walk. How to talk. Your name. How to hold a paintbrush.  Symphonies. Street names. Smells. Flavors. Blood and-”

“'Cause you're talking rock and roll
Walking karaoke soul
If you see me falling sleep
Please don't wake me from this dream”

Edgar pulled on Johnny’s shoulders, jerking his eyes open.

“Johnny, we’re going now.”

Edgar thought Johnny might have nodded, but even if Johnny had put up a fight, Edgar would have hauled him through the doorway and away from the inside of someone else’s head anyway. When Johnny’s feet crossed the threshold, he fell forward, out of Edgar’s control, and crashed into the bed as though someone had shoved him from behind. Edgar rushed to his side immediately.

“Are you all right? Are you awake? Please don’t be crazy. I can’t do crazy.”

Johnny shook his head like he would shake off sleep. “I’m fine.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“More of the same,” he answered. “And fuck, I think I was a little fixated on you.”

“You said it was everything, and that you wouldn’t remember all of it.”

“I don’t remember, at least not specifically. I remember things going through my head, but not a lot stayed there. But it was everything. It wasn’t just what I’d need to become him again, it was what a blank person would use to become me or him.”

“A blank person?”

Johnny looked at his hands, traced the scars that traveled over his knuckles and looked back to Edgar.

“Someone like a person sent to learn quickly, grow quickly and freakishly resemble an existing person.”

“Banshee…”

“Is me.”